


Moving Without Moving

by pineapplecrushface



Series: Movement [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, First Time, M/M, Memory everything, Multi, Sex, Threesome - F/M/M, memory sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 20:23:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18017825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: The thing about no longer repressing one’s worst memory was that it made all the other memories think they were just allowed to do whatever the fuck they wanted.





	Moving Without Moving

The thing about no longer repressing one’s worst memory was that it made all the other memories think they were just allowed to do whatever the fuck they wanted. Eliot had spent a long time building the beautiful boxes into which he’d stuffed those memories, and now they were just bursting out everywhere. How many years had it taken to carpet bomb some of those memories into submission with whatever substance was at hand? And after all that, did he forget his wretched family? No. He forgot the name of his third grade teacher instead, and she—she deserved to be remembered. Whatever her name was.

It was the Quentin memories that kept elbowing out the others, though. The force with which he had shoved them down into his subconscious probably had something to do with it. Quentin wouldn’t be repressed, aggressively appearing in the Cottage with his knees drawn up to his chest. Demanding his attention, silently, with that full smile that always seemed like it was just for Eliot. It probably was. He had already gone over the hundreds of memories he had of looking across a room at the same moment as Q and smiling, the two of them drawn to each other without words. Still. He was still Quentin’s, and Quentin was still his. No doubt about that when he was in the grip of sense memory that wouldn’t leave him the fuck alone.

“No,” he said. “I have things to do. I have to figure out how to get out of here on a permanent basis, Q. I can jerk off to you later, and believe me, I fully intend to, but not right now.”

The Quentin in the common room with him read a book, chin resting on one knee while the other was twisted underneath him in what had to be the least comfortable position known to anyone who wasn’t a circus contortionist. The afternoon sun sifted through the windows and landed on his left side, and he looked soft and content. He was wearing the same outfit he’d worn for the Welters Tournament. Eliot didn’t realize he had even noticed what Quentin was wearing through his absolutely deadly hangover, but he must have. His pants didn’t even fit right, and Eliot still wanted to hold him down on the couch and very slowly slide them off while Quentin begged him the way he liked to do, desperate and sweet, _please, El, oh, it feels so_ —

Quentin looked up when Eliot spoke to him, but only gave a little shrug.

“Q. Take this seriously, please. I can’t sit here and remember every time I kissed your ears, as pleasant as that would be. I have shit to do.”

Quentin gave him a brief, shy smile, tucking his hair behind his ear. “I do like it, though.”

“I know,” Eliot sighed. “You’ve made that very clear.”

It was one of the first things Eliot had learned about him when—

“No,” he said. “Present day, Q. I’m being very focused.”

It was one of the first things Eliot had learned about him when Quentin—

“God dammit.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Fine.”

It was one of the first things Eliot had learned about him when Quentin mumbled, _Is this gonna be just you with Margo and me with Margo, or, like_ …and crawled into his arms while Margo slipped away and peeled off the remainder of her clothes.

He was already so intent and nervy, diving in to kiss Eliot like this wasn’t the first time he’d kissed another man, but the moment Eliot brushed a finger over his ear he went pliant, groaning. _It’s my, oh, I love that_ , he said, and when Eliot ran a finger back over it he melted into it and Eliot kissed him, kissed him like he’d wanted to all along, though he had expected a lot more sputtering and panic and less of Quentin pushing himself into his mouth and hands like he’d lived his entire life wanting to get fucked by Eliot Waugh.

“All right,” Eliot said from the floor beside the couch, gesturing at the air. “I gave it to you. Now let me deal with my shit.”

Things were silent for a moment. He looked at Quentin, who raised an eyebrow and darted his eyes around the common room as if someone there might hear him. “I just wanted–” he began.

“Q,” Eliot said, laughing helplessly. “Sweet Jesus on a dildo bike. Stop.”

The ears, that was the first thing. The second thing was that Quentin wanted to suck his dick. No, more than wanted to. Quentin had said, precisely, that if he didn’t suck Eliot’s dick, he would die.

“Oh my fucking—” Eliot jumped up and strode around the common room.

“I did, though. Remember?” Quentin asked. He looked apologetic when Eliot glared at him.

“I know you did,” Eliot said, sprawling out on the floor again, closer to Quentin this time. “I was there.”

“It’s just, you don’t think about it.” Quentin’s voice was doing the thing he did, the thing Eliot hated because it hit him in the place where normal people had a solar plexus and Eliot had extensive liver damage. He spoke low and fast and his voice wobbled, and it honestly gutted Eliot, who would never have told anyone that in a million years. A helpful memory popped up to remind him that he had actually told Quentin twice.

“I don’t think about it because it hurt you,” he said. “And it—hurt me, knowing you hated it because it hurt you.”

“But I told you, later. I told you I didn’t hate thinking about it. I told you I…” Quentin stopped, licking his lips. “I told you I loved it.”

Yes, and wasn’t that a kick right up the asshole? It took a man with great fortitude to repress something like that, and Eliot was actually a little proud of himself that he’d managed not to think about it every moment of every day. He remembered more of their first interlude with Margo than he’d ever admitted, at least not to Margo. He had confessed to Quentin, of course, many years later. Margo claimed only to remember kissing them both, then flashes of riding Quentin, a spectacular orgasm. “That was your doing,” she told Eliot. “I don’t have to remember anything to know that.”

Eliot was secretly glad he was the only one with a crystal clear memory of Quentin before him on hands and knees, eyes hazy, saying _Eliot, can I just? I swear to fucking god, El, if I don’t I’ll die_.

Margo had goggled at Quentin and then at Eliot and said _I think he’s serious. My god. Is there a magic we don’t know about that gets straight boys on your dick?_

 _Aw, he’s just curious_ , Eliot had said, cupping Quentin’s face and running a thumb over his lips. Quentin sucked on it sharply. _And curious boys can have whatever they want, Margo. You know that_.

Quentin lifted his eyebrows and Eliot nodded, drawing him down until his warm, eager mouth was on Eliot’s cock. Things went a little sideways in his memory for a while after that, but he remembered Margo whispering in Quentin’s ear, looking up at Eliot with a delighted, avaricious smile while she did it. Whatever she told him as he sucked made him moan again and again. Eliot’s fingers were gentle in his hair, and that was new—it wasn’t that he was rough, but the way Quentin responded to slow, soft stroking of his hair and the side of his face was so hot that Eliot was pulled out of his stupor for a few moments of perfect clarity.

He couldn’t remember coming but knew he must have, because his next memory was of slowly pushing Quentin onto his back and murmuring _we’ll take care of you, Q, don’t worry_ , curling up beside him while Margo slid down onto his cock. Quentin was so wound up at that point that he was making little bitten off sobbing noises, like he was trying to cry out but the pleasure kept getting more and more intense—

“I want you to know,” Eliot told the Quentin in his mind, “those little fucking noises are my favorite thing about you. Right at the top. To be fair, you also make the best cinnamon crepes in the world, but they don’t even hold a candle to the sounds you make while you’re getting fucked.”

—while Eliot kissed Quentin’s ear and told him _we’ll make you come, we’ll fuck you so well, sweet Q, don’t you worry about it ever again._ Eliot reached down and pressed his thumb in tight circles against Margo’s clit and she said _thank fuck, don’t stop or I’ll kill you_. Quentin lifted his head to look at Eliot’s hand and instantly said _I’m about to come—Margo, oh, oh my g_ —and Eliot’s memory jumped to somewhere much later in the night, waking up with Margo at his back and Quentin at his front, Quentin’s hair in his mouth. It was right before dawn and he was mostly sober, and there was a faint sense of foreboding settling over the room, but for one second he enjoyed the warmth of his hand on Quentin’s stomach, the slow in and out of his breath and Margo’s breath. He drew Quentin closer like a teddy bear and Quentin made a small indignant noise but settled against him again. It was the smallest crumb of comfort and even now Eliot hated himself a little for falling on it like a starving man.

“The end,” Eliot said, drawing his fingers in a line like a maestro. “Q. That was an A-plus fuck, I swear, just a few points taken off for memory loss, but then so much extra credit for going after my dick with vim and vigor. Now can we please, please get to my plan so I can get out of here and do all sorts of quite frankly amazing things to your body?”

“I don’t think we can yet, El. I think we have to get through this to get to the other side,” Quentin said. He was quieter now. He wore black jeans and a black hoodie, his hair pulled back. Chalk on his fingers. Eliot didn’t even want to look at him. Not this Quentin, no.

“Who says so?” His voice cracked, knowing what was coming next. “Can’t I just put it back and not look at it?”

“That first time was pretty good, though, wasn’t it? For a first time,” Quentin said.

“Stop trying to be subtle, you tiny, beautiful bastard,” Eliot said. “If you’re going to make me remember it, just do it.”

But it wasn’t the first time that he remembered—or at least not entirely. It was still there, the way he pressed Quentin flat against the bed, holding his hands while Quentin dug his fingers into the linens—dark blue, he remembered, for the first ten or so years they were there, and then they were white—kissing his neck and fucking him into the mattress relentlessly because god, Quentin liked that, he liked it when Eliot just drove into him slow and sweet and didn’t stop. He made those noises Eliot loved—little hitching breaths between _ah, ah, ah_ —against the pillow, and when Eliot kissed his ear he actually felt Quentin go hot and pliant under him. _Oh, Q, it's so beautiful_ , he whispered without even thinking, and was surprised when that pushed Quentin over the edge, rocking fast and hard between Eliot and the bed and coming helplessly. Eliot let go of his hand to slide his fingers into his hair, gently stroking it, coaxing him into hardness again with his other hand. He really fell apart the second time, on his back that time, begging _Eliot, Eliot please_. Eliot asked _What do you need, sweetheart? I’ll give it to you_ , but Quentin shook his head and Eliot thought maybe he just needed to plead for something.

They were both a little embarrassed in the morning, and Eliot knew it wouldn’t happen again. Quentin had fallen asleep tucked completely against him, and many years later he told him, _I woke up with you all wrapped around me and I realized I loved you, and I just, I knew it was going to end when we got back, so I couldn’t_. There were other times after that, especially when Quentin was out of sorts—he’d pick a fight and get himself wound up, furious, then turn on a dime and want to get his mouth on Eliot’s cock, until there came a time—year three or four, Eliot thought—where Eliot couldn’t take it anymore and stopped him. It wasn’t until Arielle that they had finally gotten their shit together.

But no, that wasn’t really the memory that was trying to surface, lovely as it was to be able to see Quentin trembling under him again, all fine nerves and shivering and first-time sweetness. This memory was—it was _ordinary_. It was Q, in his lap—

“This one? Really?” he asked, desperate to stall.  

Q, in his lap because Quentin liked to ride, even from the very beginning when he was shy but certain about what he wanted—

Q, in his lap, fingers digging into Eliot’s shoulders, his head thrown back so Eliot could only see the underside of his chin. There was something about this memory. It must have happened a thousand times, but this one was special and he didn’t know why; it wasn’t so special at all.

It was raining, a sweet cold foggy rain that didn’t touch the mosaic but drove them indoors, and they were alone—he couldn’t remember why they were sure of a quiet interlude, but they must have been because when Teddy was young they almost never had the kind of luxurious time it took to take each other apart. And he loved—more than loved—taking Quentin apart. He was a little different every day. Eliot watched for the differences, gave each one his full attention, gloried over them.

In the first years after Arielle brought them together, they all rushed into fucking with a gorgeous heedlessness that was beautiful in its own way. There was that dance, which they laughed over later, of not quite knowing, not quite understanding, not wanting to know or understand because even then, even when they were starting to realize this thing wasn’t temporary, it was still in the back of their minds: it could end at any time. But in this memory they were beyond all that. They were already in the golden stretch of days and weeks and years that ripened, sweetened, _deepened_ as he and Quentin grew around each other.

So—Quentin. In his lap. They were on the bed, the linens all over the place. He could remember the softness of them under his palms as he leaned back to brace himself, the goosebumps that he watched rising on Quentin’s arms and shoulders and chest. The windows were open to let in the smell of the rain; he knew the warmth of his mouth on Quentin’s skin in the cold air would feel so good, and he was right. Quentin arched into him, head tipped back, when he sucked on one tight, stiff nipple. He shuddered and choked it out, _Eliot, El, oh- oh, oh_ —breathless, almost crying, rocking down faster on Eliot like he was about to come, and Eliot brought his hands around to hold Quentin’s hips in place at first and then slid his arms around him tight. The movement made Quentin tip forward and curl around him, leaning his head on Eliot’s shoulder. His cock pressed against Eliot’s stomach that way every time Eliot thrust up into him and it made him stutter out a wild, uneven sobbing noise against Eliot’s neck.

 _Quentin_ , Eliot whispered, and Quentin lifted his head. _Beautiful, beautiful Quentin_ , he whispered, because he was beautiful with his eyes dark and wet, his mouth soft, the lovely mobile curve of it that was so close to sadness. Eliot could watch his face all day if he let himself. Quentin always handed himself completely over to Eliot right at the end, before he was about to come, laying everything on the table. The first dozen times he tried to look away, eyes closed, mouth trembling unhappily, like he knew it was about to happen and he couldn’t help it, and then one day he took a shaky breath and said _When you make me come, I—it’s a lot. I’m sorry_. Eliot loved him then, though he didn’t know it. He only said, _Oh, sweet baby Q_ , _I know it is_ , and brushed his hair away from his face while Quentin let go, making those soft, shocked, cut off cries like he was discovering something astonishing, exhilarating, brand new. Something that was too much.

In this memory Quentin was already comfortable enough not to just let Eliot into that, but to bring him along. If it was too much, it had never gotten less so for Quentin, only more so for Eliot. Whatever pleasure he had given or taken before was dimly remembered as a release, a good time, a respite from pain. He had once spent twenty hours in an orgasmic haze during a ritual in Cabo after he’d fucked a pixie. And of course he remembered that, of course he did, how the hell could you forget something like that, but it just didn’t matter in the face of this specific, intricate, careful moment, this slide of Quentin’s body down onto his, this arrangement of him and Quentin and the two of them together with Eliot’s arms around him and Quentin’s lips forming the shape of his name. It was Quentin who had crowned and named him and Quentin who made his name into something more than his name, into a spell that unlocked and laid him out in a precise sequence of raw elements, and loved him. Quentin loved him. Quentin loved him.

“Q,” he panted, his hands over his face. “I can’t watch it. You of all people should understand.”

Quentin only smiled down at him from the couch. There was a little bit of his Quentin and the other universe’s Quentin mixed together in his face, soft and knowing and affectionate. Eliot rolled his eyes.

“I know,” he said. “I said I’d try to be brave, not work a fucking miracle.”

“What’s there to be afraid of?” Quentin asked, shrugging.

“Oh, you know,” Eliot threw a hand in the air. “It’s just the most beautiful thing anyone could ever imagine and it was formed under very specific circumstances that I can’t replicate and so there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to reproduce it, so I’ll live the rest of my life knowing I had it and can never have it again. Your usual Monday morning problem.”

“Eliot.” Quentin’s voice had that same feeling to it—not merely saying a name, but creating something between them, a universe of connections. It annihilated him every time he heard it, and his first instinct was to believe that it was just his own memory of the other Quentin, but he knew the truth. That was how Quentin always said his name now.

“It’s still there, isn’t it?” he asked, staring at the ceiling. It blurred and he blinked fast. “I don’t have to replicate it. It’s already in me. In us.”

“It’s ours, El,” Quentin said.

“All right.” He nodded, sitting up and resting his head on Quentin’s knee. “I can take it. Let’s watch me love you, honey.”

Q, in his lap, oh, beautiful, beautiful Quentin, who loved him. Eliot kissed his chin and then his lips and made him come just like that, held close, warm in the soft cold air, the sound of the rain—only that and nothing more than that, a mere miracle of seeing himself undone in every way and remade around Quentin, and Quentin around him. Eliot watched his own hands on Quentin, taking him in with aching slowness, and realized part of the reason the memory was so sharp, each leaf standing out in relief, each scent, every inch of Quentin writhing while he came hot between them, the flush spreading down his chest, was that he had learned how to belong to a moment without wanting to run away from it. He had no distractions. There was nothing but this. 

The memory didn’t end there. Eliot hadn’t expected it to, really. Hoped, perhaps, because—well, he fucking missed it. There it was. He missed all of it, the way they wrapped up in the blankets and decided which book to tell each other about that day. They stretched it out, not wanting to go through the stories too quickly. Eliot had found himself wishing he’d read more to escape his endless childhood, although his mental library of movies and television shows was much greater than Quentin’s, and he could act them out. It must have been Q’s turn that day, because they sat with the blanket around them, drinking hot plum tea out of the mugs Eliot had made—he was damn good at ceramics, another relic of an adolescence as the most unwilling 4-H youth leader in history—and looked out at the trees while Quentin laid out some book for Eliot in his excitable, absolutely nonlinear way. _And there was Alia—oh, I forgot she was pregnant. Did I say that yesterday? She was pregnant when she drank it_ , and Eliot stopped him every so often and said, _Q, be honest. Did you even read this book? I’ll understand if you just watched the movie for Kyle MacLachlan. We’ve all been there_.

Eliot watched it all the way until the rain stopped and they dressed and went out to work on the mosaic again, and then stayed where he was for a while and let Quentin stroke his hair. It was amazing how real he was, how warm his hands were.

“That wasn’t so hard,” Quentin said.

“Oh, Quentin,” Eliot sighed. “I could never love you any less, but you're testing me.”

He unfolded himself, standing and needlessly brushing off his clothes.

“All right, Charlton. I know you’ve been watching this entire time, you budding pervert,” he said.

Charlton sat on the steps, his face red. “I really did try not to listen.”

“We’ll start cultivating your voyeuristic tendencies later,” he said. “But first we have work to do. I can’t just sit around and wait for someone to rescue me in here or I’ll go crazy.”

“Of course,” Charlton said.

“Well, maybe one _tiny_ party,” Eliot said. “As a reward. But then, work.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can sometimes be found on tumblr [here](https://pineapplecrushface.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Movement series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004520) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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